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Graduates told to take bar work while they look for jobs
Tim Ross, Education Correspondent05.01.09
GRADUATES face a desperate struggle for good jobs as employers cut back for the first time in years.
University-leavers should be prepared to stack shelves or work behind a bar as the recession bites, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters.
Many of this year's graduates will be in for "a shock" because they have grown up in an affluent society believing that good jobs "fall from trees", the organisation said.
The forecast comes as the latest unemployment figures show that 18 to 24-year-olds are already faring worse than any other age group. And graduates are forecast to leave university this year on average £21,500 in debt.
The association, which represents 600 leading graduate employers, is analysing responses to its winter recruitment survey.
Chief executive Carl Gilleard said: "It will be the first time in six years that the trend is downwards."
He added that final-year students must be prepared to be flexible and that a good degree on its own is no longer enough - graduates now need to make themselves as attractive as possible by emphasising work experience and life skills.
"Perhaps as a result of years of growth, we have become a little complacent and think graduate jobs fall from trees," Mr Gilleard said. "They don't. And they certainly won't this year.
"It has been a little bit too easy in recent years and comes as a bit of a shock. Graduates sometimes don't really understand that it's a competition. I think it's something to do with the affluent society that Generation Y has grown up in."
Mr Gilleard said university-leavers should make the most of any job they can get. "Even if you're just stacking shelves or working behind a bar, you are gaining experience," he said.
He added that a university education is still a good investment but that some people will question this in the light of the downturn in graduate jobs.
"There will be a challenge for universities and maybe for the Government to convince next year's 17-year-olds that it's worth going," he said.
National Union of Students president Wes Streeting said the figures "will make worrying reading for students and their families preparing for graduation in 2009".
But Higher Education Minister David Lammy said employers still valued graduates' skills. "Having a degree remains one of the best pathways to a rewarding career," he said.
The figures coincide with news that investment banks have generally narrowed the universities they recruit from down to a small group including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College, London, while only a few were recruiting from the London School of Economics or University College London.
Gordon Chesterman, director of Cambridge University Careers Service, said banks' recruitment of students was about 50 per cent down on last year.
Reader views (21)
I am shocked by the comments of M Salifrio - six months to pay back a student loan? Most students nowadays (myself included) will graduate with an average debt of £22,000 - even more in the capital. Adam is correct in the government's initial justification of tuition fees was that graduates could command higher salaries, and therefore pay more tax throughout their working life.
I don't know anyone, unless their parents are multimillionaires (many of whom got us into this mess in the first place) who hasn't taken out a loan for university. I still have a year and a half left of my degree and already owe the government over £16,000. I can't even comprehend that sort of money!
I'm all for having to take on temporary work in bars/shops etc. if it means paid employment until job oppportunities arise, but student loans are designed with the idea of paying if back throughout your working life, and not until you earn over £15,000 - with the sort of money from these temporary jobs, that isn't going to be happening quickly I'm afraid, and so the government's stupid tuition fee fiasco continues anyway.
Thankfully, I'm at a university which is mentioned in the article as one of those still being targeted, but that means nothing in the real world, and there are thousands of people graduating each summer with exactly the same debt and circumstances.
The continuous criticism of graduates in this country is ridiculous, and must stop.
- Andrew, London, UK
Being a graduate doesn't automatically entitle the individual to a high paying job, it merely means that they have qualifications for such. The law of supply and demand dictates as always, so what's wrong with them getting jobs to support themselves rather than living off 'benefits' paid for by others?
- Rogan, Irving
Maybe it is because most of the UK education degrees have become worthless under Labour everyone could win a degree.
- Jacqueline, Hampstead, London
There will be huge competition for most jobs soon. Hopefully the successful candidates will be those with good manners and are polite. I'm fed up with encountering so many ill educated, impolite and stroppy young people out there these days. I do hope that the downturn will effect a big change in this regard. So if brushing up on behavourial skills helps them get a job great.
- Raymond, London
Unfortunately it is a lot to do with supply and demand. More people have degrees than ever before and good quality job vacancies just can't keep up irrespective of current economic conditions.
- Douglas, Bristol
Re Matt Hart, so 40 is old now, so are we all expected to be put out to pasture and starve in our declining years, when he is 40 I'm sure he won't feel old.
- John W, billericay essex
Matt, I'm 10 years away from being one of the 40+ men you're saying should move aside, unfortunately with the retirement age being 65+ what do you expect those older than 40 do for 25 years? Will you be moving aside post 40 for someone graduating from uni?
- Sukh, seven kings
The end of British education quality. What a joke this governement has been. What a bigger joke have been US PARENTS voting for Mr. Blair.
- Ally, London
If Nu Labor was more popular Gorden Brown could open a pub. He takes enough silly stuff.
- Steveo, London
Bar work, McDonalds, street sweeping, car washing .... these are all real jobs. Perhaps those grads with a Sonic Art degree should try busking on the tube... and those with a Media Studies degree should try the real media world : paper-rounds.
Get them off their posteriors and earning their keep for a change. Graduates are no more entitled to a job than anyone else.
- Haskey, London
This has been coming for forty years. There was an unwritten social contract that people's children would go to university and get 'better' jobs than their parents, with no thought for how an economy works, or how and where its talent should be distributed. Thirty years ago I was a very unhappy law student - unhappy with the whole development of a lumpen-graduate class - but have been a very happy stonemason for the last twenty-five. The only downside was years of quiet patronage from people who thought that my ability to build a church was inferior to their ability to shuffle paper. Their problem; but breeding a generation who need to import people from abroad to change a humble tap washer is everybody's problem. What I saw at university years ago was people mostly with no great love of learning, but who knew that they were acquiring caste status by being there. Over the period sincethen the number of lawyers has gone up 500%; I don't think that we're five times more law-abiding or contented as a result.The danger facing us is that a large class of frustrated half-educated but useless mouths, with a toxic sense of entitlement, is more likely to cause trouble than buckle down to a useful task.
- Mdj, Leyton, london
To Matt Hart
I would gladly retire early and let the younger generation take over but our beloved government has ensured that my pension has been decimated and my savings worthless.
John
- John, London england
How do they get a bar job with mass uncontrolled immigration ?
- Grim Reaper, Hell
I graduated into the early 90's recession and there were no "graduate" level jobs going. Time for these young people to get a dose of reality I'm afraid, in recent years graduates have become arrogant. Take the time to build up the skills that the education sector has not provided, a university degree can't teach you everything. Rather than a low skilled job, how about community service or the Territorial Army - they will teach you how to lead and manage people. As one who has been through it, you will have to compromise and maybe do something you don't like. Welcome to the real world.
- Joe, London
The sooner those 40+ men and women currently employed do everyone a favour and move over the better.
Graduates are the future of this country and i'm sick of the constant bitterness and negative bile that i hear from the elderly in this country.
The state of the current economy proves you're not up to it so hurry along and move aside for the future.
- Matt Hart, Enfield
Adam from Harrow is quite wrong - the Government should not wipe out student debt. I feel quite strongly that they should in fact put a cap of, say, six months after their college days end for them to pay the loans back. I have many friends whose children have left university, in some cases several years ago, and clearly made no attempt to pay back their loans, despite being able to find the money to go on numerous holidays and have very active social lives. Allowing such feckless behaviour does nobody any favours.
- M Salafrio, St John's Wood
More dumbing down of the British economy. We need Crash Gordon to go tend a bar and a new government!! The bar would be empty I am sure but so what.
- Georgie, Islington, London
They most certainly should take any work that's going, but it's a pretty poor show if after all that education they still need to be told the blinking obvious!
- Sarah Bradshaw, Enfield, Middx
Many graduating students have already been working in bars to support themselves through university. Moreover, working in a bar is not an “unskilled” job; a good bar person is worth his or her weight in gold to a decent landlord or club owner. One final point, as someone working in the bar industry I have to point that we are being hit harder than most due to the recession, nights out are the first thing to be limited by people trying to pay their bills. Moreover there are already a number of bar and hotel chains struggling to survive or actually going under.
- John David, London
Boo hoo. I left university with a not-very-useful humanities degree in 1984 during a period of mass unemployment. The only job I could find was as a junior clerk in a dole office - a low-paid and thankless post that I had to supplement with evening work. I did this for three years. Now, after 25 years of patience, hard work and some luck, I'm doing something better suited to my abilities. That's just how it is. No one owes you anything. You've had a good three years, now get over yourselves.
- Tommy Judd, London, UK
The Govt's justification for introducing tuition fees and loans was that graduates could command a higher salary than a person who did not have a degree. This was always a distorted view as the graduate would therefore pay more tax. Now that jobs are scarce and graduates working at the minimum wage, it no longer has any credence. The Govt should wipe out all student debt without delay and cease the use of tuition fees to fund courses.
- Adam, Harrow, UK
